


Dust to Dust

by apinknightmare



Series: Dust to Dust [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-22
Updated: 2014-10-24
Packaged: 2018-01-26 01:49:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1670270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apinknightmare/pseuds/apinknightmare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of one-shots, drabbles and such. Mainly Olicity. Okay, they'll probably all be Olicity, let's be real here. Unrelated, unless otherwise indicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Strawberries

**Author's Note:**

> Series title taken from the Civil Wars song of the same name, because it's perfect.

The lair smells like strawberries. 

Felicity picked them up on her way home from work from a tiny farmer’s market that sets up Friday evenings on the west side of Starling Park. She tells Oliver about the small stand run by an old man who sells that honey he likes, and wonders if maybe he'd like to come along with her next week? 

He would like that. A little too much, he thinks. It’s domestic, and Oliver Queen doesn’t do domesticity, never even thinks about it. Except when it comes to Felicity Smoak, apparently. 

It’s late summer and a heatwave makes even the subterranean air of the lair damp with humidity. A bead of sweat drips down the valley between Oliver’s shoulder blades as he sharpens his arrows, and all he can smell is those strawberries. He closes his eyes, gets a glimpse of himself and Felicity walking between rows of tents, a canvas bag full of fresh vegetables in one hand, Felicity holding tight to the other. 

It’s his favorite time of night; Digg’s gone home to Lyla, and Roy’s out roaming the broken streets of the Glades, looking for a little bit of justice. 

It’s him and Felicity, alone and together, just the way he likes it. 

She’s trying to explain the coding for a software program she’s developing that will help them track Starling City’s criminal element more efficiently. He’s desperately trying to follow what she’s saying, but it’s so damn hot, and her mouth is moving so quickly, keeping time with her hands. 

She’s a flurry of pink lips and bright yellow nails. 

God, she brings so much color into his world. 

Oliver puts down his arrow, turns to face her, just to watch her talk. He holds tight to these moments, because in a few minutes she’ll yawn and stretch and say goodnight, lingering a bit as she waits for him to finally wise up and ask her not to go. He won’t, and she’ll leave. He’ll follow her home, telling himself that he just wants to make sure she gets there safely, and she’ll pretend that she doesn’t know he’s right behind her. Tomorrow, they’ll do it all again. 

Truth is, Oliver’s weary, down to his bones. He’s tired of holding back, of putting the needs of his city above the desires of his heart. He used to think he couldn’t have her, and then he thought he shouldn’t. Now, when she’s near, he can barely think at all. All he can do is smile and wish that the clock would move a little slower. He just never has enough time. 

He must be looking at her in some kind of way, because she stops what she’s saying and smiles at him. She’s so beautiful when she smiles, and the corners of his lips turn up, he can’t help himself. 

Does he want one? Felicity holds up a berry, balancing the top between her red-stained fingertips. Oliver nods. He wants so much from her, he can’t even begin to put it all into words. But he’ll start with a strawberry.

He stands, his feet moving in time with the thundering sound of his heartbeat that’s pounding in his ears. Her eyes are wide, kind of amused, and he wants to spend the rest of his life making her look just like this. 

The tips of Oliver’s shoes touch the tips of hers, and he can hear the way her breath catches, can feel it against him as she slowly exhales. He plucks the berry from between her fingers, then brings it up to her mouth. She only hesitates for a second, then wraps her lips around it and takes a bite. Oliver tosses the stem to the side, then licks away the juice it left behind on his hand. 

She breathes his name, and it’s the first time he’s ever felt like it really _belonged_ to him. It’s never sounded like it meant so much. 

He cups her face in his hands, letting the pads of his thumbs skim across her cheeks. He’s touched her hundreds of times before, but this touch marks the beginning of something. The warmth of her makes his knees feel like jelly, and he takes a deep breath as he moves a little closer. 

Slowly, so slowly, until he can’t tell where he ends and Felicity begins. 

She tastes like strawberries.


	2. Digglet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver holds a baby, has a revelation. You know, the usual.

Oliver Queen stops at the hospital information desk, for once not here frantically asking after an injured loved one, or welcoming them back from the dead. No, his eyes are bright and he smiles at the young woman in green—Diana, her name tag reads—as he shoves his hands in his pockets, easy as can be. 

“I’m looking for Lyla Michaels,” he says. 

Diana asks for his ID and scribbles his name on a sticker that has VISITOR printed neatly along the bottom in blue ink. She peels it off its sheet and hands it to him, so Oliver playfully smacks it against his soft grey t-shirt. 

“Room four twenty-three,” she says sweetly, drawing a maze-like line on a map before she tells him to follow the path she just marked in black Sharpie. 

Oliver takes his time, a rare thing, enjoying the smiling faces and the cries of newborn babies. He doesn’t even have to look at the room numbers, he just follows Felicity’s voice. She always seems to lead him to exactly where he needs to be. 

“I can’t believe you haven’t named him yet,” she says teasingly, as Oliver leans against the doorway. 

“It’s tradition in my family to name the firstborn son after their grandfather,” Lyla says, shooting a not-so-subtle glare in Digg’s direction. 

“What’s your father’s name?” Felicity asks, because of course she does. 

“Maurice,” Digg replies. Oliver can tell right away that Diggle’s the one holding up this whole naming business. “There’s nothing wrong with something simple, like Anthony.” 

Or Andrew, Oliver thinks, although he knows Digg and Lyla have already discussed that to death. 

“So what am I supposed to call this little guy?” Felicity asks, looking at the baby in her arms with wide eyes. “Digglet?” 

Digg's, Lyla's and Felicity’s faces all screw up with varying levels of disgust when the word tumbles out of Felicity’s mouth. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she says, before anyone else has time to say a thing. “I won’t ever say that again, promise.” 

Oliver laughs, he can’t help himself around Felicity, and all three heads turn in his direction. He walks over to Digg and gives him a hug, then leans down and kisses Lyla’s cheek as he offers both new parents his congratulations. Lyla’s bedside table is covered with a huge vase that’s full to bursting with bright flowers. He knows without asking that they’re from Felicity. Everything about them is just so _her_.

“Hey,” Felicity says, smiling up at him. She scooches over just a bit, so that there’s room next to her on the sterile-looking loveseat. There’s another chair in the far corner, one that he probably should sit in, but right now he’s not really interested in the things that he should do. So, he gently lowers himself down, careful not to disturb the sleeping baby. 

“He’s beautiful,” Oliver says, to no one in particular. Digg and Lyla are just staring at the blanket-wrapped baby with smiles plastered on their faces, looking so in love that they don’t even know what to do with it all, like there isn’t enough room in this world to hold it. 

Oliver though, he can’t take his eyes off of Felicity. She looks good holding a baby, he thinks, and doesn’t really let himself go any further than that. There’s something right about the picture, something special about the way Felicity handles delicate, fragile things. 

“Do you want to hold him?” she asks. 

She’s placing him in Oliver’s arms before he even has a chance to tell her that he hasn’t held a baby since Thea, and he’s not really sure if he should. He’d been so careless and unburdened back then; he hadn’t lived enough or suffered enough to realize just how precious life really is. It seems like Oliver’s always learning those lessons the hard way. 

The baby reaches out and wraps his tiny fingers around Oliver’s fingertip, gripping it tightly. 

“He’s strong,” Oliver says with kind of a laugh, looking up at Diggle. There’s a pride and contentment in his friend’s eyes that makes Oliver feel like maybe, just maybe he’s letting his life pass him by, only part of the good things when they’re happening to someone else. 

Oliver and Diggle have lived very different lives that are incredibly similar when you get right down to it. They’ve both done unspeakable things to save people, and unforgivable things to survive. They've done the kind of things that Oliver always thought made him too sullied to be able to enjoy the simple pleasure of holding a newborn baby, much less even think about being a father to one. That’s why he’s always cloaking himself in darkness, going out to the dirtiest part of his city to make things right; so that people like Digg and Lyla can have a family and feel safe sending their children outside to play. 

Oliver looks down at this tiny, new, innocent person that he’s holding with hands that have taken so many lives. It seems wrong to even touch him, to be able to hold him like this. He doesn’t know how Digg does it, how he stops his past from weighing down his present, from building a wall between him and his future. 

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Felicity asks. 

Yes, Oliver thinks, not even knowing what she’s talking about. Because she is, she’s beautiful. Everything about this day is just…beautiful. So his answer should be yes, it is, but his curiosity gets the better of him, so he asks. “What’s beautiful?” 

“A clean slate,” she says softly, a little secret between the two of them. She gently slides the back of her finger across the whisper-soft skin on the baby’s cheek. His little lips pucker, and she smiles. Oliver does, too. “No matter what they’ve done,” she says, nodding towards Digg and Lyla, “they can make it right with him, isn’t that a blessing?” 

Somehow Felicity always knows what Oliver’s thinking, knows exactly what he needs to hear. He can barely breathe for the lump in his throat, and he’s blinking back tears. Her fingertips slip gently across the nape of his neck, then her hand slides down his back, unraveling all the wound-up nerves and melting away the tension. She always manages to make him feel lighter than air. 

Felicity stands, and Oliver misses her the second she walks away. It’s a constant state for him at this point, missing her. Things haven’t been the same between them ever since he told her he loved her, ever since he let her believe it was a lie. So she’s closed herself off from him a bit, trying to protect herself from him. Like she should, he thinks, even though it hurts him, makes his heart ache. He supposes that’s the least he deserves after what he’s done to her. 

He watches her hug Digg and Lyla, kissing both of them on the cheek, and the small smile she offers him as she walks out of the room nearly undoes him. As he looks down at the baby he’s cradling in his arms, he wonders if maybe someday, when it’s all over and he hangs up the hood, if maybe, maybe…

“What are you waiting for, man?” Diggle says with this half amused, half exasperated look in his eyes as he reaches out and picks up his son. His _son_ , Oliver thinks, hardly believing it. “Don’t you realize how short life is?” 

It is short, Oliver knows that better than anyone. That’s why he lets the people he loves just slip right through his fingers, lets them move on to better things, to safer places, to people who deserve them more than he does. Just once he wants to be able to hold onto one of them, wants to wrap his arms around them and hold on tight. During the lonely nights he spent on Lian Yu, he promised himself he’d do exactly that if he ever got back. Then he dedicated his life to his city and nothing he wanted seemed to matter anymore. 

But it matters now, because for the first time in a long time, Oliver dreams about his future instead of his past, and those dreams are full of a blonde-haired IT expert with dark-rimmed glasses and a smile that’s brighter than sunshine. He wonders if maybe one day he could have what Digg has if he could ever manage to stop letting her slip away.

“Go, Oliver,” Diggle says. “Go.”

Oliver runs—breaks out into a full sprint in the middle of Starling General. 

He finds Felicity in the parking garage, his heart leading the way to her. He yells out her name and she turns, looks utterly unsurprised to see him standing there. She’s almost always two steps ahead of him in every way that matters. 

She stops walking and waits for him, just like she always has. Only this time, Oliver comes to her, and they stare at each other, saying more without words than they ever could with them. That’s their way. 

Then Oliver reaches out and threads his fingers through hers. 

And he doesn’t let go.


	3. Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After they defeat Slade, the real work begins.
> 
> **EDIT 07/09/2014: This one-shot has been expanded into its own series. [You can find it here.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1847812/chapters/3973774)**

Oliver finally locates Felicity when he parts a sea of A.R.G.U.S. agents, shoving through the crowd of them gathered on the street outside the treatment plant. Slade’s long gone, ushered away in handcuffs by Waller and two large men. Now they just have to tend to the business of the aftermath: rebuilding the city and chasing away the demons this night unleashed within all of them. 

His heart skips when he sees her, looking shaken but trying like hell to hide it. She’s hugging her arms to her body, shivering, and Oliver can’t contain the rage that bubbles up inside him. He yells at anyone who will listen, doesn’t _someone_ have a blanket? Seconds later, a small woman in a paramedic’s uniform is placing one in his hands. He shakes it open and wraps it around her shoulders, gathers the edges in his grip and pulls her close, right against his chest. He winds his arms around her and holds on tight, like somehow he’ll be able to cocoon her inside his body, carry her around with him to keep her safe. 

He risked too much tonight, put her life and her heart on the line. And now that they’re both standing on the other side of the fight, safe from one madman even though others are waiting for them just over the horizon, Oliver’s not sure if the risk was worth it. Felicity has withdrawn into herself, and he knows how she feels. He’s all too familiar with the emotional crash that comes when you finally start to realize all the fears the adrenaline chased away. He never wanted her to become familiar with it too, but she’s too far in now, he won’t ask her to leave. In fact, he holds her tighter. She’ll keep pushing him along the path to becoming a hero and he’ll always come up just short, because he doesn’t think he’ll ever stop being selfish when it comes to her. 

He told her he loved her. It was a stupid, reckless thing, but he couldn’t help himself when he was faced with the grim reality of what he was asking her to do. He wonders if she knows he wasn't lying, but does it really matter? Those words have consequences whether she knows he meant them or not, and Oliver wonders what his will be. What will he do if their relationship changes? What will he do if it doesn’t?

“Are you okay?” Oliver whispers. He waits for an answer, gets a feeble nod against his chest in return. He needs to see her face, so he crooks his fingers beneath her chin and tilts her head up. Her eyes are watery, but she won’t cry, and he traces the pad of his thumb along the delicate curve of her lower lip. 

He wants to kiss her; warm and slow, until his mouth chases the chill from her body and the doubt from her heart. It would be such a comforting thing, but she pulls away and turns her head, quietly tells him that she wants to go home. 

He nods, tosses the blanket aside, and leads her to the alleyway where he stashed his bike. She settles onto the seat behind him and he reaches back, sliding his hands over hers and guiding them into his jacket pockets. He didn’t bring a helmet so he tells her to hold on tight, press her cheek against his back and close her eyes. 

The rumbling engine shatters the early morning silence, and they ride off into the night.

~|~

Felicity’s in the shower for a long time, stretching the limits of her hot water heater.

Oliver sits, hunched over her tiny kitchen table, staring at the delicate flowered pattern on her tablecloth. He balances a small plate on his knee, on top of which is his attempt at dinner. On the island, he learned how to cook a rabbit to perfection. With an open flame, he could turn a fresh kill into the perfect meal. Here—in a modern kitchen—he’s lost. But he knows how to use a knife, so ham and cheese it is. He just hopes that she’ll eat it.

Eventually Felicity pads into the kitchen with her wet hair piled on top of her head, her small frame drowning in a fluffy pink bathrobe. He pushes the plate toward her. She looks at the sandwich, picks at the crust. The shower washed away a lot of the blood from her head wound, and only now can he see how large the gash truly is. Someone should’ve given her stitches. He should take her to the hospital now, but she’d fight him and that’s the last thing he wants. He reaches over and skims his finger along the edge of the bruise that’s blooming just below Felicity’s hairline, and tries to ignore the ache in his chest when she flinches at his touch. 

Not used to silence when he’s around her, Oliver stares down at his lap, picking at a hangnail as he works up the courage to ask the question he’s afraid of hearing the answer to. It gets caught in his throat every time he attempts to ask it, until the words finally just spill out. 

“Did he hurt you?” 

She looks up from her sandwich and there’s no warmth in her eyes; Oliver feels like he’s looking at a stranger. It’s disconcerting, but he buries the feeling. This isn’t about him. 

“No,” she says quietly, then shakes her head. “Not in the way that you think.”

Oliver stops breathing and squares his shoulders, ready to fight an invisible enemy. “What did-”

Felicity’s chair scrapes loudly against the floor, and Oliver watches her disappear up the stairs. He waits an hour for her to come back down. 

She doesn’t.

~|~

The buttery yellow slice of light shining through the crack beneath Felicity’s bedroom door leads Oliver down the hallway like some kind of beacon. He raises his hand to knock, but thinks better of it. She won’t talk to him until she’s ready, and he’ll wait. Maybe it’s time he was the one waiting on her for a change.

Exhausted from the events of the night, Oliver leans against the wall, rests his weight there until his legs can’t hold him up anymore and he slides down onto the floor. His head lolls back against the doorframe and he closes his eyes. Not for the first time, he wonders what his life would’ve been like if he hadn’t gotten on the Gambit. He wonders what would’ve happened after his relationship with Laurel ended, once she found out about Sara. About all the others. 

How long would it have taken him to grow up and get his shit together? Would he have started working at QC like his father wanted him to? He imagines running into Felicity at Big Belly during the lunch rush, asking if he could sit with her because there weren’t any other open tables. He’d hold out his QC badge so she’d know he wasn’t trying to put the moves on her, and she’d do the same. They’d talk about work. She’d tease him about how quickly he ate, and he’d laugh at the way she flipped her burger over and reassembled it from the bottom up before she would eat it. She always does that. He thinks it’s cute in this life, he would’ve thought it was cute in that one. 

He would’ve loved her in that life, too. He wonders if she could have loved him.

~|~

Their plane to China is ready to board, and Oliver stands, slinging his duffel over his shoulder. He picks up Felicity’s bag with his free hand, then looks down at her. She’s still in her seat, all hunched over her tablet.

“What are you doing?” Oliver asks. She still isn’t talking much, but she’s coming around. 

She looks up at him, her eyes brighter than they have been in hours. There are bags under them though, she needs to sleep. On the plane he’ll insist. 

“I’m researching,” she says. 

“Researching what?” He steels himself, a little worried about the answer.

She presses the button that puts her tablet to sleep and stands. “Making transistor radios out of coconuts. You know, just in case we go Gilligan. I really hate that island, I’d never make it five years.” 

Oliver laughs, and the sound is so foreign that it surprises him, but it manages to draw a smile from Felicity. It’s been at least day since he’s seen one from her, much too long. He sighs, can’t take his eyes off her. 

_God,_ he thinks. _She’s beautiful._


	4. To Remember

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone wants to give me a prompt or two, I'm taking them over on [Tumblr](http://apinknightmare.tumblr.com/)!

Oliver’s sitting on a bench in the garden that flanks the west side of Queen Manor. It’s a dreary, overcast day, but the sky’s been threatening to open up all afternoon. It’s typical, he thinks. It seems like he’s always waiting to see the sun, but there’s just so much _gloom_ around him. 

Felicity makes her way across the yard, searching for him on the grounds. He notices the way her whole face lights up when she spots him; it makes his stomach flip. She’s wearing this soft pink sweater and jeans, and her hair’s up in a messy ponytail. She’s just so…bright. 

She joins him on the bench, and they sit together for a while, quiet. 

Oliver takes everything in, tries to memorize it all. The Manor has been sold; this is is the last time he’ll ever be here. He couldn’t bear to go inside again; his last memory of his childhood home is of Felicity standing in the foyer after he told her he loved her and left her thinking it was a lie. It’s bittersweet, which is fitting, he supposes. 

He doesn’t even know how she can stand to be around him after everything that’s happened between the two of them. Yet here she is. 

“I made sure it was empty,” she tells him. “Everything’s gone.”

 _Yeah_ , he thinks, swallowing the bile that rises in his throat. _Everything’s gone._

“You don’t want to go in one more time?” 

He shakes his head. What he wants is to have his family back. What he wants is some peace. What he wants is…so far beyond his grasp right now. 

“Okay,” she says softly. “I have something for you.” 

Felicity reaches into her absurdly large handbag, and at first Oliver can’t tell what it is she pulls out, and then he can’t even fathom how she has it. 

She hands him a plank of wood that used to make up part of the floor at the foot of the window seat in Thea’s bedroom. When Thea was little, Oliver would sit on that seat and she would curl up in his lap and beg him to read her a story. One book became two, became three, and then her eyelids would get droopy and she’d beg for one more. Always, _one more, Ollie. Please._

One night Thea gave Oliver a book with a tree on the cover, a pair of initials carved in the trunk. 

“Why do people do that?” she asked. 

He thought for a moment. “To remember.” 

“I wanna remember,” she said. 

So Oliver tiptoed downstairs to the kitchen and grabbed the sharpest knife he could find, then he carefully carved out a memory.

  
_OJQ_ and _TDQ_  
  _5/12/01_  


Oliver slides his hand across the wood, feeling the indent of their initials beneath his palm. Tears sting his eyes, and he can’t believe the mess he’s made of things in the years since.

“How did you know about this?” he asks, his voice completely wrecked. 

“You mentioned it once,” Felicity says gently. “I figured you might like to have it, and you probably wouldn’t think to take it.” 

“How could I have forgotten?” He rubs at his eyes with the pads of his fingers, wipes the tears away. He doesn’t want her to see them.

“You’ve had a lot on your mind, Oliver,” Felicity says. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her reach out for him, but she reconsiders and pulls away. “It’s my job to pay attention to the details.” 

_Was her job_ , he thinks, feeling a fresh wave of shame wash over him. She’d still have one if he hadn’t made a unilateral decision about her life without consulting her. 

“Hey, I thought this would be a nice thing for you to have, I didn’t…I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.” 

“You didn’t,” he tells her. “This is…” he takes a deep breath, sighs as he holds the board against his chest. “Thank you. How did you even manage to get it?” 

“I didn’t rip it out, if that’s what you’re asking,” she says, amused. 

Oliver imagines Felicity crouched over the cherry wood floors, trying to dig between the slats with her fingernails. He laughs; it’s been so long since he’s done that and he’s worried that his chest might crack from the sheer force of it. 

“Why are you laughing?” she asks with all the faux outrage she can muster. “If I wanted to pull up that floor, Oliver Queen, I _could_ have.” 

He doesn’t doubt that for a second. 

“I can use tools, you know!” She’s smiling, and it’s just what Oliver needs. “When I was in ninth grade, I built a Rube Goldberg that could shoot three pointers.” Making a throwing motion with her right hand, she says, “Nothin’ but net.” 

Oliver’s confused, but he gets the feeling he should be impressed by what she’s telling him. He’s impressed by her always. 

“You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?” 

He grins, shakes his head. “No. So…how’d you get it?” 

She looks down at her hands, twists her fingers together. “A friend owed me a favor.”

Oliver realizes, for the thousandth time probably, how lucky he is to have Felicity in his life. He told her that he loved her on the grounds of this property, and he wishes he could say it again, right now. He wants her to know that he meant it—that he _means_ it—because he’s not sure it counts if she thinks it’s a lie. He wants it to count. For him, _it counts_.

“Thank you,” he says. Usually he’d reach over and squeeze her hand or touch her in some way, but he doesn’t think he’s allowed to do that anymore. And it’s strange, missing her when she’s sitting right in front of him, being so close to her and feeling so far away. 

He thinks she must sense his hesitation, because she changes the subject. “Pizza and beer are usually moving day staples, but we’re not really moving anything, so I think it could count as comfort food? What do you say? Dinner’s on me; we could bring it over to Digg and Lyla’s.” 

He’s not sure how to tell her that he’d like them to be alone. It’s a terrible thing to ask for after everything he’s put her through, but his heart hurts and he just wants to be with her. 

“We could eat at your house,” he says, trying to sound casual. It’s funny, Oliver Queen being nervous asking a girl to go back to her place. “With the baby on the way, it’s kind of…busy at Digg’s.” 

“You know you can stay with me, right? The offer is still there. I have the room, and-”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he says, unable to hide the sadness in his voice. 

“Oliver,” Felicity sighs. “It doesn’t have to be weird, you know. I’m not holding you to anything.” 

Sometimes he wishes she would hold him to it, push him about what he said to her that night. He thinks that might be the only way he’ll let himself be with her; if he’s given the choice between loving her or nothing at all. He didn’t realize how much he meant it until the words came out, and it killed him to leave her. He wants to tell her all that; he wants to tell her so many things. 

“I know,” is what he finally says. “It’s just better if I stay with Digg and Lyla for now.” 

“If you get tired of sleeping on the couch or getting woken up by morning sickness-y barfing, you can always spend the night with me.” She cringes, pinches the bridge of her nose and takes a deep breath. “I mean, in my spare bedroom. Where there’s a bed. For you to sleep in. Alone. Or, I guess if you wanted to-”

“Felicity,” he says, laughing. “Thank you.” 

She smiles, rubs the palms of her hands on her jeans. “So, pizza at my place?” 

He nods. “Pizza at your place.” 

She stands and looks at the ground for a second, her brows drawn together. He wishes she would tell him what she’s thinking. 

“I'll help you up,” she says, offering him her hand. 

He lets himself take it.


	5. Pockets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still taking prompts on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/apinknightmare). I'm a bit of an idiot and only recently figured out that I have to actually put an "ask" link on my page. If you'd like to me to write something in particular, please send it there.

Every nerve in Oliver’s body is buzzing with post-mission adrenaline.

If they were back home, he’d work it out on the salmon ladder, maybe spar with Digg or Roy for a while. But a drug-smuggling ring infiltrated Starling’s ports, and the promise of apprehending its leader brought the team all the way to Coast City. Now that the criminal is in custody, Oliver’s stuck in the room he’s sharing with Diggle and Roy, and the only enemy left to fight is himself.

The room is suffocating. There are too many people in such a small space; Oliver feels like the walls are closing in on him. Fresh air would help, but there’s a conference in town and the only adjoining rooms they could find were beach front. Even now, years after his return from Lian Yu, being near the ocean makes him restless. The white noise of the surf beating against the shore and the tang of the salty air makes panic claw at his insides, makes him remember things he’s always trying so desperately to forget.

The door leading to Felicity’s room is cracked, and Oliver’s knocking before he even has a chance to give it a second thought.

“On the balcony,” she yells.

Of course she’s on the balcony. Oliver steps into her room anyway, he just needs to be near her. The curtains are blowing in the steady sea breeze, and he chokes a bit on the air. But when he sees Felicity all relaxed and sitting back with her feet propped up on the railing, it’s suddenly easier to breathe. Her eyes are closed; tendrils of hair brush across her cheek, and her red lips are turned up into a peaceful smile.

When Felicity finally opens her eyes, she startles when she sees Oliver standing in her doorway. She swings her feet down and makes a move to get up; she knows how he feels about the ocean.

“Stay,” he says softly, stepping out onto the balcony.

“Are you sure?” The concern in her eyes is so evident that he longs to reach out for her, to touch her cheek. “If you need me, we can go inside.”

Of course he needs her—he always _needs_ her—but tonight he wants her to stay right where she is.

“May I?” he asks, nodding toward the seat next to hers.

“Of course.”

Oliver sits down, stretches his legs out in front of him. “It seems a bit ridiculous now,” he tells her. “The thing with the ocean.” He knows he’s not getting shipwrecked again, and there isn’t a doubt in his mind that if he ever got lost, Felicity would find him.

“It’s not ridiculous,” she says with an understanding smile. “I’m afraid of kangaroos. _That’s_ ridiculous. But I can’t trust a living thing that has a built-in pocket.”

Oliver laughs, and it shatters all the anxiety inside him; it loosens his muscles, helps him relax. “Built-in pockets seem pretty convenient, actually.”     
  
“That’s because you’re always armed to the teeth,” she replies. “Plus, I don’t think you get your pick of where the pocket is. What if it winds up in a weird place?”

“Define weird,” Oliver says with an amused lilt. He gets such a kick out of her.

She shrugs. “I don’t know. Your upper back? The inside of your thigh? Someplace not readily accessible, especially to someone who wears leather pants as tight as yours.”

He’s surprised that she doesn’t seem to be at all embarrassed at the admission that she’s noticed how tight his pants are when he’s dressed as the Arrow. He’s seen her look, and yeah, he likes it. He often takes a special interest in her skirts when she walks up the stairs of their lair; he figures they're even.

“It’d be nice to have a place to put my keys,” he says.

A rush of butterflies slams full-force into Oliver’s stomach when Felicity laughs. It’s such a beautiful and light sound; he wants to hear it again and again.

“Having one on your back probably isn’t a good idea. Did you know that koalas have rear-facing pouches, and, like…because they can’t clean them, their body actually secretes this weird antimicrobial solution to disinfect them? So, not only can I not trust living things that are born with built-in pockets, I can’t trust living things that secrete antimicrobial solution. That’d be like having a bottle of Dial poking out from your armpit or something. I guess it would be convenient if you got your hands dirty pretty often, but then you’d have to be close to a water source, so…”

She looks up at him mid-ramble, and he can’t help that he's grinning like an idiot.

“I’m sorry, I’m…you know,” she points to her mouth and makes a wild motion with her hand. “I’ll shut up now.”  
  
  “Don’t,” he tells her. “I like it.”

“My mouth?”

_Yes._

“Listening to you talk.”

“You mean listening to me babble.”     
  
“Yeah,” he says. “Something like that.”

Felicity pulls a glass from the table next to her, then wraps her fingers around the body of the bottle beside it and pours herself some wine. “Would you like some?” she asks. Oliver nods, and she grabs another glass. “It’s room service. I paid for it myself, I know we’re vigilante-ing on a budget.”  
  
“Felicity,” Oliver says, almost reverently. “If you want some wine, you can put it on the room tab.”

She shrugs. “I wouldn’t feel right about it.”  
  
  She has access to every single one of his bank accounts, she knows his social security number, she has his power of attorney. His life is always in her hands.

“Anything that belongs to me belongs to you.” Sometimes he thinks she wonders if he realizes what he’s implying when he says things like that. He knows. One day he’ll be able to tell her he wants to share his life with her. For now, this has to be enough.

“I’ll remember that next time,” she tells him, handing him his glass.

“So, kangaroos. Anything else?”

Felicity takes a sip of wine. “Needles, heights. New Windows releases scare the bejeezus out of me.”

Oliver laughs. “You’ve jumped out of a plane. You never even flinch when we zip-line down a cable. And…” _Slade_ is what he doesn’t say. She stabbed Slade with a needle. She saved them all.

Felicity shrugs, plays with a loose thread on her shirt. “It’s not so scary when I’m with you.”

Sometimes he wonders if she realizes what she’s implying when she says things like that.

“What about you?” she asks.   
  
“What about me?”  
  
  “What are you afraid of?”     
  
 _Being in love with you. Hurting you. Losing you_ , he thinks. What he says is typical Oliver Queen. “Don’t you know? I’m fearless.”

She sees right through him, always knows when he's lying. Tonight she doesn’t call him out on it.

* * *

 

“It’s late,” Oliver tells her. “We have to be up early.” He takes her wine glass and puts it down on the concrete at their feet. After he stands, he holds out his hands, pulls Felicity up out of her chair. There’s this sleepy heaviness to her eyelids, and the wine is making her blush.

“I’m going to jump in the ocean before we go,” she says. “Tomorrow.” Her words come out a little slower than usual, relaxed. It’s nice.

“Okay,” Oliver replies, following her into the room. He wishes her goodnight, then reaches for the handle of the door that adjoins their rooms, and it’s locked. He immediately knows that Roy’s responsible. Digg has the decency to be more subtle than this. Oliver jostles the handle once more for good measure, then slams his palm against the door.

“What’s the matter?” Felicity asks, poking her head out of the bathroom. Her hair is all piled up on the top of her head, and she’s holding a few cotton balls in one hand, a purple bottle in the other.

“Locked out.”

“Just stay here then,” she says, like it would be the easiest thing in the world. “You paid for the room.”

Oliver shakes his head, even though there’s some idiotic part of him that considers it. “I can just jump over the balcony. I bet they left that door open.”

He sees the flash of hurt in her eyes, but she hides it quickly. “You’d rather jump from a balcony ten stories up than sleep with me?” She cringes, but doesn’t correct herself.

“I…” He doesn’t have an answer. If he tells her it’s a bad idea (and it is, it’s a _terrible_ idea), then she’ll ask him why, and he really _would_ rather jump from a balcony ten stories up than answer that question.

She lets out this long-suffering sigh, and he hates himself for all the things he puts her through.  
  
“Just sleep on the other side of the bed, Oliver. I’ll stay on mine, okay? It’s not a big deal; it doesn’t mean anything.”

Felicity disappears back into the bathroom, and Oliver lowers himself onto the edge of her bed.

 _It doesn’t mean anything_ plays over and over and over again in his head. The words fester; they make him ache.

* * *

 

Felicity’s fast asleep on the other side of the California king, too close and yet not nearly close enough. Oliver’s awake; he’s been awake this whole time, watching the clock as the twelve turned to one turned to two turned to three. He’s restless, but Felicity’s steady breathing calms his racing heart.

She shifts, and her arm just kind of…flops right across his chest. He nearly laughs, then catches a glimpse of her peaceful face bathed in the moonlight that’s shining through the sliding glass door. Suddenly laughing is the furthest thing from his mind.

In her sleep, Felicity snuggles into him. He likes the feel of her body against his, breathes in the flowery scent of her. He wants to get up from this bed in the morning with her smell clinging to his clothes; he wants that reminder of her to follow him around.

Felicity sighs, and this one isn’t long-suffering or exasperated. It’s peaceful and content.

For the first time all night, Oliver closes his eyes. Finally, he sleeps.

* * *

 

When he wakes up, she’s gone.

There’s this blade of panic that slashes through his chest until he remembers that she told him she wanted to go swimming before they left. Oliver stands up and stretches, walks out onto the balcony. It’s still so early; the sun has barely broken over the horizon, the sky is pink and orange. There—a couple of yards off the shoreline—is Felicity.

Oliver’s spent years running away from the loud, unforgiving surf.

This morning, he runs toward it.

* * *

 

Oliver watches her for a few minutes, takes in the way the early morning sunlight kisses her curls, watches the way her bathing suit’s red-stringed knot hugs the back of her neck. He’s never been so interested in a knot before, never wanted to reach out and just…unravel one like he does right now. He’s transfixed by her creamy skin, wants to rest his hand on the small of her back. He bets she’s so, _so_ soft.

He wades into the water, focused solely on the way she skims her fingertips over the cresting waves as they push past her legs and break apart.

Felicity doesn’t seem at all surprised when she sees him standing next to her.

“You’re in the ocean,” she says.

Oliver flexes his fingers, presses them against the worn cotton of his shorts. “It’s not so scary when I’m with you.”

Felicity’s smile steals the breath right out of him, and he turns and faces her, takes her hand in his.

“You were wrong, you know.”

“About what?” Her voice is shaky.

Oliver gives her a soft, affectionate smile as he reaches out and twists a tendril of hair around his finger. His thumb brushes her temple, and her eyelids flutter shut.

“It means something,” he tells her. “You and me.”

She brushes her lips against his palm, and when she pulls away she takes all the fight he has left with her.

Oliver kisses Felicity during high tide in the warm water of the Pacific, with sand between his toes and water lapping against his legs. When they finally part, Felicity presses her forehead against his, and Oliver inhales. The salty air fills his lungs, and for once there’s no panic, no torment, no memories. Only peace.

“That was…” Felicity’s a little breathless, and Oliver understands.

“Yeah,” he sighs.

“You should do it again.”

That’s exactly what he does.


	6. Building a Bridge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilers for Season 3!

It’s difficult for Oliver, pretending that things are normal, that there isn’t an ocean of hurt between him and Felicity. I love you’s are supposed to bridge this kind of distance, not make it wider.  
  
Tonight, even though she’s sitting three feet away from him, those feet feel like insurmountable miles.  
  
She’s wearing this ridiculously beautiful midnight blue ballgown with a flowing skirt that keeps getting caught under the wheels of her chair as she rolls back and forth between monitors, trying to find info on the latest criminal wreaking havoc on their city. Her hair is pinned up, and Oliver can’t stop staring at the delicate curve of her neck, can’t stop imagining what it would feel like to press his lips against the skin there.    
  
He’d been so close to having it all on that warm October night when he had opened up to her in the middle of an Italian bistro. They weren’t even halfway through one date and he already wanted another. Then a rocket blew them apart, and a day later, Oliver finished the destruction.  
  
He thought it would be a clean break, that it’d be easy to pile all those feelings into a box and just…put them away.  
  
Then he kissed her. He wishes he’d kissed her sooner, that he’d given her a thousand kisses before that first and last one. He had counted on that _maybe_ , had hoped that she’d take it and wait for him. But when Oliver Queen miscalculates, he miscalculates spectacularly. In the end, he’d only had seconds. Felicity walked away, and things haven’t been the same since.  
  
She’s still here in the foundry, supporting him the way she always has, even though she’s late meeting Ray Palmer. He thinks Felicity and Ray might be a _thing_ now, but he can’t bring himself to think of it as more than that. She seems happy though, and he wants that for her, even though tonight she’ll find that happiness in another man’s arms. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but it’s a poison of his own making. He knows this, he’s dealing with it.  
  
“You should go,” he says, his voice very soft. He can barely get the words out. “This can wait until tomorrow. I know you love parties, and you shouldn’t miss this one.”  
  
Felicity’s fingers still on her keyboard, and she gives him this appraising look, like she can see every thought that’s making its way through his thick, stubborn skull. He doesn’t try to hide any of it; masks have always been useless around her.  
  
“You think I love parties?”  
  
Oliver shrugs. “When I ran QC, you did. I thought-”  
  
Felicity shakes her head, her eyelids fluttering shut. “Oliver,” she sighs. For a second he thinks she might reach out for him, and he can’t even describe his disappointment when she doesn’t. He misses the warmth of her skin. Maybe if he told her that, _maybe_ … “I didn’t love the parties, I loved going to them with you. I loved…”  
  
The sentiment trails right off into nothing, and part of him wonders how his heart can still beat through all the cracks its endured.  
  
“You’re right,” she says as she stands and picks up her clutch. “I should go.”  
  
She makes her way to the stairs, and Oliver just cannot bear to watch her walk away from him one more time with so much left unsaid.  
  
“Felicity.” His voice cracks, his throat is so tight it’s almost impossible to speak.  
  
She turns, and her eyes are wide, like she’s expecting a revelation. He wants to give her one. He wants to give her one _so_ badly. He wants to tell her that he can’t stop thinking about the way it felt to cradle her face in his hands, that he misses standing so close to her that he can smell her perfume. He wants to tell her that he believes in starting over, in second chances.  
  
Instead, he settles for a quick, uncomplicated truth. He starts to build a bridge.  
  
“I miss you,” he says.  
  
She gives him this soft, tentative smile. It’s been so long since he’s made her do that, and he thinks it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.  
  
“I miss you, too.”  
  
Just like that, he can breathe again.


End file.
